(Classic+ Survey) Thoughts?

[Askmoregold-illidan]

https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/1l3buyv/classic_changes_survey/#lightbox

1. As many class/race options as possible.
2. Collections tabs, account-wide, yes
3. 1v1 areas IN RETAIL TOO PLEASE, FFS!
4. models, events, pets etc. are fine with whatever happens, not really “important.”
5. More useable gear? Better professions? Yes, (Hopefully blacksmithing won’t be “dead” for early levels?)
6. Please don’t add the “new” abilities that got added in SOD which were just retail abilities. If you’re going to add “new” abilities, make sure they are ACTUALLY new.
7. Fix the honor system and more honor gear? Yes
8. WoW token? Maybe…
9. Class Talent Adjustments? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, make it so that Druids can FINALLY have an insect/nature themed playstyle that is actually competitive/viable. I wish Retail had green wrath and insect builds, but I’d settle for something in a new version of Classic…
10. Perks, progression, achievements, I guess, more “quality of life”/not that important.
11. More races? (High Elves) AGAIN, YES!
12. More zones/variations? Yes
13. Player Housing? In Classic? Sure?
14. Cross-Realm? Yes, If you do any kind of “lockout system,” make it as minimal as possible. Mythic raiding in Retail still sucks just because the lockouts make pugging annoying (and Guilds, the only “alternative,” have all sorts of issues).
15. War Mode? Sure
16. Different raid sizes? Awesome, please do 10 man, or even “solo raids” if possible.
17. Graphic improvements? Sure
18. New Battlegrounds? EXPLETIVE YES! At least do the “removed” dragon one that was basically “DOTA.”
19. New class? Game could use things like venomancer, a melee class that uses purple spells, a class that uses whips, or even combo classes? It’d be fun to be able to basically play a Shaman, but have “warrior” charge, as well as some ranged hunter abilities/weapons.
20. Not sure why the end of the survey focuses on “Mists of Pandaria” so much. Wish it had options for “Retail if it was actually good,” or “New version of Classic if it’s actually good,” or “Legion with some changes, like ~7% increased chance for titanforge/legendaries.”

[Perl-anetheron (Perl)]

You should be able to edit your first post there and move it to the Classic General Discussion forum. That would be a better place for this.

Edit: Looks like it’s in the right place now

[Xfour-bigglesworth]

So basically retail?

[Sältheart-crusader-strike]

If they do High Elf Spell Breakers and Troll Shadow Hunters…my gawd

Also, hard no to WoW token. All for yall finding a way to monetize, we will pay up if it’s quality, just don’t tie it to gold or pay2win. Selling C+ as an expansion pack is a good start

[Snipy-faerlina]

@Askmoregold-illidan

1v1 areas IN RETAIL TOO PLEASE, FFS!

The idea that 1v1 is or should be a thing, at least in my opinion, is something that has lead to class homogenization and has been a great detractor from the gameplay and PVP team balance of Classic.

[Ziryus-pagle]

Most of it is fine assuming it’s done well.

I mean obviously the point of classic+ would be to not be just classic. So new content, better balancing etc… all good. My biggest flat out issue would be updating graphics.

[Zaalg-ashkandi]

I love the “Please keep this confidential” statement. I mean…really. Are they that naive?

Anyway, some of it is interesting. Some of it is horrifying.

[Steeldust-nightslayer]

This is exactly what I don’t like about the whole idea of Classic+.

The list is basically asking what Retail features you want to see put into the game. If you prefer Retail that makes sense. If you like how the game changes from Vanilla through MoP it makes sense.

If you prefer the game how it is in Vanilla and TBC it seems like the team is out of touch and doesn’t understand what people like about the game.

What they really need to do is fix the main problems that are the quit points. Honestly I think something fresh that is still WoW but not something we have done before (e.g. First War) is a lot better idea.

[Ziryus-pagle]

@Steeldust-nightslayer

The list is basically asking what Retail features you want to see put into the game. If you prefer retail that makes sense. If you like how the game changes from Vanilla through MoP it makes sense.

If you prefer the game how it is in Vanilla and TBC it seems like the team is out of touch and doesn’t understand what people like about the game.

Well that depends, there were legitimate problems with vanilla etc… that they did try to solve. Some of those attempts worked some didn’t.

Solving them in different ways than retail has gone is not the same as retail. The point of classic + would be to not be retail or classic. Since obviously if you love retail you would play that, and if you want #nochanges vanilla you would just play that.

[Zaalg-ashkandi]

@Steeldust-nightslayer

If you prefer the game how it is in Vanilla and TBC it seems like the team is out of touch and doesn’t understand what people like about the game.

At this point I guess we just need to accept that we’re not their audience. They don’t want to capture the spirit of Vanilla, or offer a unique experience.

As you say, they just want to borrow from Retail. Design for Retail players. It’s simply…bad business. You’d think they’d want to expand their playerbase.

[Xfour-bigglesworth]

@Zaalg-ashkandi

As you say, they just want to borrow from Retail. Design for Retail players. It’s simply…bad business. You’d think they’d want to expand their playerbase.

The fact they even sent out a survey shows the game is likely cooked from the start.

Now whenever someone over there comes up with a good design proposal, the entrenched people will point to the survey and be like “Look our audience wants retail features” and weaponize that survey.

They need a dictator to make a great classic+ not a committee.

[Frostiwarr-whitemane]

My ultimate Classic Era wishlist

As someone who only plays era and closing in on 150 Naxx clears across my characters as well as over 100 on warrior (which I know pales to a lot of other people who are nearing 400 on era) here’s my ultimate wishlist for changes the current iteration of era. Repeatable world buffs (once every 3 months) Means giga geared players will get out and help bwl/ony/ZG/ubrs so they can drop buffs. Prevents degen boosting just for buffs. Remove breakpoints in PVP Atm I need 175k to progress to rank 10…

Repeatable world buffs
Remove breakpoints in PVP
Yearly scourge invasions
Re-open raids on PTR
Bring in Stormrend
Keep GDKP
Don’t implement lotus changes
Don’t implement the WoW token on era.
Don’t implement level boosts.
Don’t balance anything.

[Ziryus-pagle]

@Xfour-bigglesworth

@Zaalg-ashkandi

As you say, they just want to borrow from Retail. Design for Retail players. It’s simply…bad business. You’d think they’d want to expand their playerbase.

The fact they even sent out a survey shows the game is likely cooked from the start.

Now whenever someone over there comes up with a good design proposal, the entrenched people will point to the survey and be like “Look our audience wants retail features” and weaponize that survey.

They need a dictator to make a great classic+ not a committee.

A lot of the questions were extremely broad and in no way specifically retail implementation though.

For example new classes/spells/abilities, that’s is completely open ended.

Or improving class balance, something A) heavily requested and worked on during vanilla B) no reason it would have to be the same as retail.

[Xfour-bigglesworth]

@Ziryus-pagle

For example new classes/spells/abilities, that’s is completely open ended.

Or improving class balance, something A) heavily requested and worked on during vanilla B) no reason it would have to be the same as retail.

The last thing leadership with vision needs is a survey to muddy the waters.

If they don’t understand what their audience likes after 20 years that’s a whole other problem, but even understanding their current audience isn’t going to make a good classic+ it will make another retail.

[Ziryus-pagle]

@Xfour-bigglesworth

@Ziryus-pagle

For example new classes/spells/abilities, that’s is completely open ended.

Or improving class balance, something A) heavily requested and worked on during vanilla B) no reason it would have to be the same as retail.

The last thing leadership with vision needs is a survey to muddy the waters.

If they don’t understand what their audience likes after 20 years that’s a whole other pro blem, but even understanding their current audience isn’t going to make a good classic+ it will make another retail.

Well blizzard understanding their audience or not is a much bigger issue.

If we’re doing with modern blizzard is completely incapable of understanding the audience for classic + then we should just go with original Wrath Era since that’s when WoW peaked.

[Xfour-bigglesworth]

@Ziryus-pagle

Well blizzard understanding their audience or not is a much bigger issue.

Their current audience hasn’t changed in 15 years.

They should be making a classic+ for the future generations, not their current audience which is only going to shrink every year.

Vanilla shook the world because it was good - radically good - every other wow version rode its coattails into obscurity.

Vanilla had the pvp detail and care of wc3 and the immersion of a full world. A survey asking about ‘warmode’ ‘i.e. all servers are pve’ - shows there’s no vision.

[Hwanwok-ysera (Hwanwok)]

I mean I guess it depends on how they handle them?

I’m fine with Transmog, collection UI, Cross-realm play and guilds (not like that server communities nevered mattered anyway, even in 2019) and Warmode.

The only thing I hope for graphical improvements, graphical texture and players are that they are a toggle button and not forced.

As much as 40 man is cool back in the day, I would rather do 10 and or 20 man raids.

New stuff like classes. races, zones, class combinations, dungeons, raids and battlegrounds, part of Classic+ so would like to see them.

Indifferent on pet battles, 1v1 arenas, in-game events, account-wide perks and progression and tradeskills and new profession items.

Hard no on one thing is WoW token but given this is blizzard, they are going to add it.

@Askmoregold-illidan

Not sure why the end of the survey focuses on “Mists of Pandaria” so much. Wish it had options for “Retail if it was actually good,” or “New version of Classic if it’s actually good,” or “Legion with some changes, like ~7% increased chance for titanforge/legendaries.”

The last section is probably to gauge people on where they are going after MoP.

WoD has been a divisive expansion and wants to see if there is some folks that want to go back to Draenor, I dont really have interest in that expansion as I have been there, done that but also while the raids banged, I didnt have nostalgia, the only reason it would exist is the fact that it would be Legion waiting room.

If Draenor isn’t happening, Classic progression servers will stop at MoP and will essentially be an era server, frozen in the SoO phase, there is options where you could take your MoP characters (Personally I find taking MoP characters to Classic era or Wrath classic to be a weird choice and realistically isnt going to happen) to retail.

[Ziryus-pagle]

@Xfour-bigglesworth

@Ziryus-pagle

Well blizzard understanding their audience or not is a much bigger issue.

Their current audience hasn’t changed in 15 years.

They should be making a classic+ for the future generations, not their current audience which is only going to shrink every year.

Vanilla shook the world because it was good - radically good - every other wow version rode its coattails into obscurity.

Vanilla had the pvp detail and care of wc3 and the immersion of a full world. A survey asking about ‘warmode’ ‘i.e. all servers are pve’ - shows there’s no vision.

Blizzard either understands why they peaked in Wrath or they don’t.

SoD was pretty hit or miss but it didn’t have some decent stuff in it.

[Xfour-bigglesworth]

@Ziryus-pagle

Blizzard either understands why they peaked in Wrath or they don’t.

The game didn’t peak in wrath, the population did.

In my view, vanilla is a much better game, it just took time to market and get millions of players onboarded.

And by the time they did, the game kept getting worse because they followed the design philosophy from tbc onwards, not the vanilla one.

They made a game that continuously tries to coddle players and give them rewards for just showing up, dailies, etc. Instead of a curated, dangerous, amazing world that is immersive - they basically threw every idea good or bad into the game as long as it made somebody happy.

[Steeldust-nightslayer]

Class balance is chasing the unobtainable. At no point in the game’s history have all classes been in equal standing for a given role. I’m not even sure it is possible to balance PVP, Raiding and Mythic+ and the nuance of being easier to play becomes a factor too. Your class might be capable of very high output and be dead simple or capable of the same output but only in the hands of the best players. It’s a really hard problem and adding more classes doesn’t help.

On understand the audience my main point is there is a clear split. I don’t care for the newer models, especially the Tauren and think the game leans too heavily on “forced fun”. For me WoW as we know it ends in Icecrown Citadel, beyond that I don’t care and didn’t enjoy it other than PVP. I’m hoping for something else in whatever they are cooking with “Classic+” and so far its looking grim - but they could surprise me.